Debunking 9/11 Myths: Introduction to PM Expanded Investigation

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Debunking 9/11 Myths is available as a paperback, ebook, and enhanced ebook. The latter contains ten videos and audio clips, carefully selected to support the evidence presented, including the security camera footage of Flight 22 crashing into the Pentagon.

Introduction

On September 29, 2009, a convoy of 25 tractor trailers wound through the hills of western Maryland, then turned north. The trucks were decorated with American flags, along with banners that read, "Never Forget 9/11." The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), was returning 250 tons of steel to New York City.

Each piece of mangled metal, collected from the wreckage of the World Trade Center towers, had been meticulously cataloged and studied in Gaithersburg, Maryland, as part of the organization's multiyear investigation into what was not only the most horrific terrorist attack in United States history, but also the nation's worst building disaster. The agency's reports joined a growing chorus of dissertations, engineering analyses, and journal articles describing the probable sequence of events that occurred in Lower Manhattan on the morning of September 11, 2001.

With the release of its Final Report on the Collapse of World Trade Center Building 7, NIST's study was complete. The steel hauled north represented a literal and symbolic end to the most massive scientific investigation the agency had ever conducted. But the task of disproving the cacophony of conspiracy theories that surround 9/11 may never end.

The first conspiracy theories began to emerge while the wreckage was still smoldering. As evidence accumulated that conclusively linked the hijackings to Al Qaeda, some self-proclaimed skeptics searched for alternative explanations. Many seemed driven to find a way to blame the United States for somehow abetting, or even orchestrating, the tragedy.

In the years since the attacks, these assertions have grown progressively more lurid and pervasive. If you search the phrase "9/11 conspiracy" on the Internet, you will discover more than one million web pages. A few skeptics make a responsible effort to sift through the mountain of available information, but a vast majority ignore all but a few stray details they think support their theories. In fact, many conspiracy advocates demonstrate a double standard. They distrust the mainstream media coverage and government-sponsored investigations of 9/11, yet they cherrypick from those same sources to promote their extreme notions: that the hijacked planes weren't commercial jets, but military aircraft, cruise missiles, or remote-control drones; that the World Trade Center buildings were professionally demolished; that American air defenses were deliberately shut down; and more.

Popular Mechanics began studying these theories in the fall of 2004, after an advertisement ran in the New York Times for the book Painful Questions by Eric Hufschmid, demanding that the 9/11 investigation be reopened. Hufschmid's book includes a number of tangible claims regarding 9/11. It states, for example, that because jet fuel does not burn hot enough to melt steel, the fires in the World Trade Center towers could not have caused their collapse. And it claims ample evidence exists to show that demolition-style explosives were pre-positioned in the buildings.

As editors of a magazine devoted to science and technology, we saw these claims as significant. Was there hard evidence to support them? And, if so, what would be the implications for our understanding of 9/11? At the very least, we thought, someone should look into these allegations. If there were even a hint of truth to these or similar claims, then the conspiracy theorists had a point: There should be a deeper investigation.

The magazine assembled a team of reporters and researchers and methodically began to analyze the most common factual claims made by conspiracy theorists—assertions that are at the root of the majority of 9/11 alternative scenarios. We interviewed scores of engineers, aviation experts, military officials, eyewitnesses, and members of the investigative teams—more than 300 sources in all. We pored over photography, maps, blueprints, aviation logs, and transcripts. The results of our research appeared in the March 2005 issue of Popular Mechanics. That cover story, "9/11: Debunking the Myths," provoked a strong reaction on the Internet and in the mainstream media.

In the months after we published the investigation, many readers—both critics and supporters—wrote to suggest other evidence they thought we had overlooked or to raise new claims they believed worthy of investigation. Just before the fifth anniversary of 9/11, we reinterviewed experts and sources from our first investigation and produced a book-length version of our findings.

Over the past five years, new theories—and evidence to combat them—have surfaced. With this revision of the book, our team of reporters and researchers debunks the most common speculation about free-fall times, "nano-thermite," and other aspects of the Twin Towers' collapses that began fermenting as the previous book was published. We have dedicated an entire chapter to the many myths surrounding the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7, which initially puzzled even the most qualified investigators. Additionally, we have included new endnotes to point readers to places where they can begin their own informed research, and incorporated new sources. Finally, we have added clarifications to some of our original reporting.

The goal of this book is not to tell the complete story of what happened on September 11, 2001. There are numerous excellent sources, including the 9-11 Commission's report, the National Institute of Standards and Technology reports, and articles in the New York Times and other newspapers that chronicle the attacks in painful detail. Instead, this book aims only to answer the questions raised by conspiracy theorists themselves. Strip away the political content and logical leaps, and every conspiracy theory ultimately comes down to a small set of claims based on evidence that can be examined. These claims are the only points where the theorists' elaborate conjectures make contact with the physical world. Without these foundations, the theories crumble. In every case we examined, the key claims made by conspiracy theorists turned out to be mistaken, misinterpreted, or deliberately falsified.

We understand that not all conspiracy theorists believe all conspiracy theories. Some prominent theorists even claim that certain theories they deem less plausible have been "planted" in order to make the entire movement look ridiculous. We don't take sides in these debates. We simply check the facts.

The work of comprehending the events of 9/11 is not finished. It is vital to understand the lapses and shortcomings on the part of government agencies in the months and years leading up to 9/11. Every American wishes our government had been more alert and better prepared. And every American is entitled to ask hard questions. But there is a world of difference between believing that our government should have known what was coming and claiming that someone did know and deliberately did nothing—or, even worse, that the government actively perpetrated attacks on its own citizens. By deliberately blurring that line, conspiracy theorists exploit and misdirect the public's legitimate anger and anguish over the events of that day.

Some argue that alternative 9/11 scenarios are valuable in that they promote skepticism of a government that has not always been as open as many would like. But a climate of poisonous suspicion will not help America adjust to the post-9/11 world. And the search for truth is not advanced by the dissemination of falsehoods.

Debunking 9/11 Myths is available as a paperback, ebook, and enhanced ebook. The latter contains ten videos and audio clips, carefully selected to support the evidence presented, including the security camera footage of Flight 22 crashing into the Pentagon.

Foreword

Popular Mechanics set out to investigate conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attacks in late 2004, just as those claims were emerging from the swamps of extremist websites and radical Islamist organizations. We had no idea how much trouble we were about to stir up. Our first magazine article on the topic, which appeared in the March 2005 issue, closely examined the major scientific, military, aeronautical, and engineering-based claims commonly cited as evidence that 9/11 was, as conspiracy theorists like to say, an inside job. Our investigation found no evidence in support of the conspiracy claims—but many cases in which facts cited by the theorists had been deliberately twisted.

The article unleashed a flood of criticisms and accusations from those supporting such theories. These attacks ranged from the preposterous (it was said our magazine had published this investigation on orders from a cabal of Masons and Illuminati) to alarming (death threats were referred to our security -department). Clearly, we had touched a nerve. The article quickly became the most widely read story in the history of Popular Mechanics' Web site, with over 7.5 million views. (A detailed account of the reaction to our article, and what that reaction says about the conspiracy movement, can be found in the original afterword to this book on page 121.)

A team of Popular Mechanics reporters and editors then started work on a far more detailed book-length version of the report. By the time the first edition of this book was published in the summer of 2006, the 9/11 conspiracy furor was reaching a tipping point. The flurry of books on the topic had grown into an avalanche, with certain writers, such as former Claremont School of Theology professor David Ray Griffin, building a thriving cottage industry around the topic. Conspiracy fans had, with Orwellian overtones, taken to calling themselves "the 9/11 Truth Movement," or simply "truthers." Extremist talk radio programs such as The Alex Jones Show pushed the issue nonstop. And a video pastiche of conspiracy theories, a quasi-documentary known as Loose Change, was becoming an Internet sensation. The film's director, an aspiring filmmaker from Oneonta, NY, named Dylan Avery, would eventually produce several versions of the film with various collaborators. Avery and his colleagues showed little aptitude for fact-checking, but real talent as propagandists. The various editions of Loose Change would go on to become some of the most widely viewed films in the history of the Internet.

At that time, as today, it was my view that the facts surrounding September 11, 2001, matter. It was a momentous day, one in which nearly 3,000 civilians died, and one that would shape U.S. and world history. The political response to 9/11 brought about significant changes in U.S. law and in the structure of our federal agencies. The two wars it spawned drag on to this day. It is hard to imagine a recent historical event more important for Americans to understand accurately. If there was even the slightest truth to the allegations raised by 9/11 conspiracy theorists, those facts would be of the gravest geopolitical and historical importance.

Popular Mechanics' 9/11 project represented one of the relatively few attempts by mainstream journalists to grapple seriously with the conspiracy theory claims. So it was telling that most conspiracy theorists—who are eager to repeat any shred of mainstream reporting they believe bolsters their claims—quickly decided that Popular Mechanics too was part of the conspiracy. In their minds, all our research could therefore be rejected a priori. We had run head on into a worldview that some experts call "conspiracism." It is a mind-set that insists on reaching a predetermined conclusion regardless of what information is presented. Any facts that don't fit the conspiracy paradigm need to be explained away. Since 2004, leading 9/11 theorist David Ray Griffin has written seven books and edited two others on the subject of 9/11. He devoted a chapter in his book, Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory, to explain why, in his view, the 9/11 reporting by Popular Mechanics and other mainstream journalists is invalid.

Griffin's book devotes many pages to the idea that Popular Mechanics and our parent company, the Hearst Corporation, are somehow implicated in the vast conspiracy he sees behind 9/11. He digs up century-old controversies and finds tenuous links between the magazine's staff and various government officials. But he never explains how a magazine—much less a major corporation—could possibly convince its employees to help cover up the most notorious mass murder in our nation's history. Popular Mechanics has close to 30 editorial staffers and dozens of freelance contributors. Does Griffin imagine that whenever we hire new editors I bring them into a secret bunker and initiate them into an ultraclandestine society for world domination? Why wouldn't such prospective employees run screaming from our building? In the years since we began our work on 9/11 conspiracy theories, a number of our staffers have moved on to other jobs. What would stop them from revealing a conspiracy that, if true, would be one of the biggest journalistic scoops in history? Did we swear them all to lifetime secrecy? As with so many conspiracy claims, the whole elaborate fantasy becomes practically laughable on close examination.

On the one hand, it's understandable that many journalists saw these overheated theories as being too marginal to take seriously. But on the other, it is unfortunate that so few media outlets bothered to address the many clearly erroneous claims of the conspiracy set. Their reluctance to enter the fray gave conspiracy theorists access to uncontested ground. As this book documents, many conspiracy claims rely on snippets of material from mainstream media outlets. As a rule, these snippets have been quoted wildly out of context or reflect minor errors in initial reports that were later superseded by more accurate reporting. But, when the news organizations that published or broadcast these accounts failed to challenge flatly deceptive interpretations of their work, it allowed conspiracy theorists to add a veneer of credibility to their fanciful claims.

As a result, a vague sense that there might be some truth to conspiracy theorists' claims began to seep into American popular culture. Individually, many examples of how the conspiracist mind-set infiltrates our culture are fairly minor, even silly. But they add up. In 2007, Rosie O'Donnell, then one of the hosts of ABC's The View, endorsed the theory that pre-planted explosives were involved in the collapse of World Trade Center 7. (Attacking the mainstream account that heat from fires weakened the structure, O'Donnell showed her passion for the topic—and her limited knowledge of basic metallurgy—in saying, "I do believe that it's the first time in history that fire has ever melted steel.") In 2009, the FX show Rescue Me, starring Denis Leary and about a fictional group of New York City firefighters, aired an episode that focused on conspiracy talking points. The storyline centers on a character played by actor Daniel Sunjata, who strongly believes that "9/11 was an inside job."

Other celebrities whose supportive statements have lit up conspiracy blogs in recent years include Janeane Garofalo, Roseanne Barr, Woody Harrelson, Willie Nelson, Charlie Sheen, and 2011 Academy Award nominee Mark Ruffalo, who recently told conspiracy-minded group "We Are Change," "I don't want to jump to any conclusions, but I also don't think that it's ever been given its due diligence considering that it's the largest crime ever committed on U.S. soil." And in February, seven-time Emmy Award winner Ed Asner put out a YouTube casting call for a new movie titled "Confessions of a 9/11 Conspirator." The script, he says, is based on Griffin's research and proves that, "The official accounts issued . . . have been proven without any doubt whatsoever to be one big lie from start to finish." Actors like Harrelson and Sheen might not be poster boys for clear-headed thinking—but that doesn't mean their words aren't embraced and amplified by the conspiracy set.

Conspiracy theories also began to creep into our national politics. Cynthia McKinney, who served six terms in the U.S. House of Representatives as a Democrat, and who was nominated as the Green Party candidate for president in 2008, was an early and outspoken adherent to the conspiracist view of 9/11. In 2005, she invited Griffin to address the Congressional Black Caucus on the topic. Advocates of conspiracy theories were a prominent, if little noted, component of antiwar and other left-leaning gatherings through most of the past decade. ("I'm a 9/11 truther," antiwar icon Cindy Sheehan recently announced.) But fondness for conspiracy theories is not a strictly partisan affair. During his 2008 presidential run, Libertarian Ron Paul also seemed to include a disproportionate share of conspiracy fans among his eclectic group of supporters. And in January, former Libertarian Party of Nevada chair Jim Duensing announced that he would seek his party's nomination for the presidency in 2012. Duensing—who that same month held a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day rally at a shooting range—is the founder of Libertarians for Justice, which demands "justice" for "researchers and experts who have dedicated their lives to researching the government's conspiracy theory" about 9/11.

The issue reached the White House in 2009, when it was revealed that Van Jones, the Obama administration's special advisor for green jobs, had apparently signed a petition circulated by www.911truth.org charging that the Bush administration "may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen." After much controversy, Jones resigned in September of that year from the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

Conspiracy theories generally get a much more sympathetic reception overseas. Griffin and other leading theorists frequently tour Europe and Asia, where arguments that the United States engineered the deaths of its own citizens often meet with a positive response. International polls have shown that, in many countries, the evidence showing that Al Qaeda carried out the attacks fails to persuade the majority of citizens. For example, according to one poll, only 39 percent of the population of U.S. ally Turkey blames Al Qaeda for the attacks, while 36 percent believes the U.S. was responsible. In Egypt, 16 percent of the public attributes the attacks to Al Qaeda, but 43 percent believes Israel was behind the events. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad alludes to 9/11 conspiracy theories in speeches, including ones delivered at the United Nations and in other international settings.

Given that Al Qaeda, and bin Laden himself, repeatedly took credit for the attacks, the wide support for conspiracy theories overseas is troubling. The death of bin Laden at the hands of U. S. forces in May 2011 seems unlikely to change that dynamic. Regardless of one's view of U.S. foreign policy, the fact that such theories leave our allies confused—and enemies emboldened—cannot be good for America's long-term interests.

In the U.S., the rising tide of 9/11 conspiracism has seemed to slow, and perhaps even abate, in recent years. Popular Mechanics' work on the issue has been a key part of that process. Since our original article was published, some of the more far-fetched conspiracy claims have increasingly fallen out of favor with theorists themselves: for example, the notion that a missile, not an airplane, struck the Pentagon; and the idea that the aircraft that struck World Trade Center 2 had a military "pod" bulging from the fuselage. Of course, dedicated conspiracists rarely rethink their conclusions, no matter how often the facts supporting those conclusions turn out to be false. The original Popular Mechanics article addressed 16 of the most common 9/11 conspiracy claims. The first edition of this book expanded that list by four, and added much more detail. As a result, many of the more adept theorists simply moved on to new theories, or shifted their focus to issues that our team had not covered as deeply. For example, at the time we published the first edition, there was still no definitive account of why World Trade Center 7—which was not hit by planes, only damaged by debris—also collapsed. Not surprisingly, as the truther community moved away from talk about missiles and pods, it began focusing obsessively on elaborate theories concerning WTC 7. (With the benefit of much more detailed engineering analysis, this edition addresses—and debunks—those WTC 7 claims in depth.)

It is hard to argue without facts. And yet that is the position in which 9/11 conspiracists increasingly find themselves. One by one, the key factual underpinnings of their theories have been demolished. But still they argue on, their passionate conviction undiminished, until they've come to resemble the Black Knight in the famous scene from the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Overmatched in a swordfight, the knight loses one arm, then the other, then both legs to stand on. But he is undeterred, shouting, "It's just a flesh wound!"

In the end, the truther community's tendency toward unintentional self-parody has perhaps done as much to undermine its credibility as has the work of Popular Mechanics. Just when the conspiracy movement seemed to be making real headway toward deeply influencing American culture, a funny thing happened: it began to turn into a punch line. South Park offered a brutal parody of the conspiracist worldview in an episode called "Mystery of the Urinal Deuce." Comedian Jon Stewart started tweaking truthers on The Daily Show, at one point holding up a sign reading "9/11 WAS AN OUTSIDE JOB." And, in a common-sense answer to the vast legion of conspiracy-oriented websites, an assortment of sharp, and often satirical, blogs has emerged to challenge the truthers on their own turf. In particular, the blog Screw Loose Change offers devastating analysis of the truther community, and links to point-by-point rebuttals to the claims advanced in Loose Change.

Of course, conspiracy theories involving 9/11 will never fully go away. And a book like this, no matter how widely reported or carefully updated, will never convince the most dedicated conspiracists. But, on the eve of the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, it is important to have a clear, objective, and thorough response to the consistently false and deeply malicious claims of the conspiracy movement. And that's what this book aims to do. As journalists, our highest responsibility is to help the public understand the facts. Over the years that Popular Mechanics has been involved in this issue, more than two dozen researchers, reporters, and others at the magazine have helped in this enterprise. In particular, Popular Mechanics executive editor David Dunbar has led the project from its earliest days, and contributing editor Davin Coburn has supervised the vast reporting effort required to complete the job. My thanks go out to each of them, as well as to the hundreds of sources who've given us their time and expertise, and in the process, often exposed themselves to attacks from extremists.

Like so many others, I was in New York on September 11, 2001. I'm proud to have played a small part in ensuring that the events of that day are remembered honestly and well.